Last time I wrote about reading like an indexer and what it is I do and look for when reading a text and writing the rough draft of an index. Today I’d like to reflect on my editing process. A few months ago I started tracking my time when I… Read More »My Index Editing Process
Happy New Year! I hope your holiday festivities were heart-warming and restorative. My wife and I started ours with our car dying the night before we planned to hit the road, though the holidays did get better from there and we are thankful for a few days with family. I… Read More »Making Friends with My Calendar
It has so far been a busy summer. That means tight deadlines and renewed thoughts about how to be more efficient in my indexing process. I mean, indexing is tough. It is constant analysis, understanding what the text means and discerning how to make the text accessible to readers. If… Read More »Three Indexing Mind Hacks
I leave Wednesday morning for the Indexing Society of Canada’s annual conference, held this year in Winnipeg. Departure is now less than forty-eight hours away. This last week I have been counting down the projects I need to finish before I leave. My goal is to finish the last index… Read More »Confessions from a Tight Schedule
“How long does it take to index a book, anyway?” This is one of the most common questions I am asked by non-indexers. It is a fair question. What is this alchemy of words and numbers that I do from which an index is created? Do I actually have to… Read More »How to Marinate an Index and Other Time Factors
My childhood was conducted in three languages. At home, my family spoke English. School, from grade one to halfway through grade three, was conducted in Mandarin Chinese (half way through grade three I transferred to the English-speaking international school, where we still had daily Mandarin classes). The language spoken at… Read More »Code-Switching, in Language and in Freelance Life
It has been a busy year. I had projects waiting for me when I got home from Christmas holidays, and the work hasn’t stopped since. It has been pretty tiring at times too. Working evenings and weekends? Check. Working on two indexes at once? Check. Have projects that take longer… Read More »Surfing the Schedule, and Those Damn Easy Projects